Purpose: The purpose of this Instruction Memorandum is to designate or verify individuals within the Montana/Dakotas organization to serve as Data Stewards for the listed data subject areas and corporate applications (national and state). Attachment 1 lists these data areas and corporate applications.

Individuals that are identified as data stewards for applications do not have to be the senior technical expert; they must, however, have an in-depth knowledge of the data and how the data is used. In some cases, more than one individual may need to be named.

Policy/Action: Please review the information on Attachment 1 and confirm or correct as necessary. Responses should be sent to Kevin Brooks, State Data Administrator, via email (kbrooks@blm.gov) on or before November 21, 2008. If there are missing applications or program areas, please assign a data steward and forward that information as well.

Timeframe: November 21, 2008

Budget Impact: None

Background: “The Bureau of Land Management is spending over $188 million a year collecting and storing information. This data is collected in many different ways and to many different standards. Much of this data is used once, or stored in ways that make it difficult to share or to aggregate in order to understand regional or National conditions or trends. Although technology and software has been developed to simplify both storage and sharing, current practices fail to take advantage of these tools. The Bureau must improve how data is collected, stored and used so it can meet its responsibilities to inventory and report on the condition of public land. Proper data management is an essential process to properly manage these lands.” (Managing for Excellence Data Management Subcommittee (MEDS), 2007)

It is now time to verify data stewards for these data subject areas and corporate applications at the state level of the organization.

What is the role of the State Data Steward? A data steward is a subject matter expert within a specific business subject area as designated by management. Data Stewards have specific responsibilities for insuring that data collected and utilized in our organization meets our needs and are managed as a corporate asset.

A State Data Steward is responsible for:

Creation of data standards and business rules.

Coordination within the state for quality assurance/quality control processes and procedures on program data.

Ensuring that data is managed as a corporate resource.

Coordination of field office data management programs with the National Data Steward and State Data Administrator.

Coordination of data sharing and data management activities across functional business areas.

Distribution of information on Bureau/state data management initiatives to program specialists.